Cress Albane
Cress Albane is a protagonist in Tales of Phantasia. He is a 17-year-old swordsman from the small village of Toltus. He is the son of Miguel Albane, a famous swordsman and master of the local sword fighting school. As such, he has practiced sword fighting since he was a young child. In Summoner's Lineage, Cress is the emperor of the Herothese Empire. Datalog Cress is Utsukushī's brother. He loves both his parents and sister, but is clumsy at expressing it. Things are made even more difficult by Utsukushī's rebellious age and unreasoning resentment towards his brother. Though deeply upset by his parents' death, he sees how much Utsukushī has grown during the subsequent events, and encourages her to find her own path and make her own decisions. Job Class Cress is a Swordsman, known for equipping swords, shields, and heavy armor, and having high physical stats. The Swordsman is usually one of the first obtainable jobs in each game, and in some games are a upgraded form of the Warrior job. Jobs such as the Magic Knight or Brandish are consider more powerful variants of the class. Standard artes usually associated with the Swordsman job include Demon Fang, Sword Rain: Alpha, and Rising Phoenix. Fighting Style Cress, being the traditional swordsman, uses swords and other blades in battle using the Albane School of Sword Fighting. As the first swordsman in the series, many of his artes are considered the archetypal swordsman artes for the series. His attack strength is, unlike the rest of the characters in the game, separated into thrust and slash stats, with his various artes depending on one or both. Many of his artes are designed to either halt or push enemies away, as for most of the game it is Cress protecting three mages from most enemies. He has such artes as Sword Rain, which subjects an enemy to a flurry of stabs, and Beast, which knocks enemies back with a lion's head. Cress also has several artes to boost his own abilities to either defeat enemies quicker, in the case of Coil which boosts his attack power, or allow him to fight longer, such as the health-restoring Inspiration. Also unlike the rest of the characters in the game, his artes are separated into two, later three, distinct classes: the Deadly Skills and the Secret Skills. Deadly skills are learned through levels, while secret skills must, for the most part, be learned from books which have to be bought or found throughout the world. His secret skills build on his deadly skills, combining two of them into a stronger attack. Cress introduces an even higher tier of physical artes: the Hidden Secret Skill, which would later be termed the mystic arte. His Dark Blade is the first mystic arte in the series. Cress, through the agency of obtaining the Eternal Sword and its components, also uses various artes termed "space-time attacks", which are mostly unique to him. Artes Deadly Skills *Demon Fang *Swallow Dance *Lightning Tiger Blade *Sword Rain: Alpha *Tiger Blade *Focus *Rising Phoenix *Guardian Field *Void Tempest *Vital Flair *Beast *Light Spear *Hell Pyre *Coil *Distortion Blade *Chaos Blade *Lunge Arcane Artes *Demonic Swallow Kick *Demonic Tiger Blade *Demonic Sword Rain *Demon Spear *Lightning Swallow Kick *Lightning Tiger Blast *Lightning Tiger Thrust *Lightning Tiger Spear *Phoenix Dance *Phoenix Blade *Phoenix Sword Rain *Phoenix Spear *Beast Swallow Kick *Beast Blade *Beast Sword Rain *Beast Spear *Chaos Distortion Blade *Chaos Lunge Trivia *Cress's name is romanized as Cless Alvein during the ending credits to the Japan-only Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom, as well as in the instruction manuals for the Japanese versions of the game. Due to this, fans tend to use the name Cless when referring to him, especially in the unofficial DeJap translation of the game. However, in his cameo appearance in the US version of Tales of Eternia, his name was localized as Cress. This has carried through into Nintendo's official translation of Tales of Phantasia on the Game Boy Advance and Tales of Phantasia: The Animation by Geneon. It should be noted that Japanese people pronounce the r and l sounds the same way, so neither one of Cress's name translations is incorrect. *Cress and Stahn Aileron are the only main protagonists who wear a headband. In the Tales of Fandom Gaiden bonus DVD, Cress insists that a "true hero" wears a headband and wields a sword, validating Zelos Wilder's claim that he is the lead hero of Tales of Symphonia instead of Lloyd Irving. Other lead protagonists argue with Cress and Stahn about this statement, leading to other comments that "true heroes" are merely "country bumpkins", or that they must have the ability to use Demon Fang to be known as heroes.